


the fist, the knife, the pulse under your skin

by Ro29



Series: Messing around in the Soft Wars Sandbox [15]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Child Abuse, Dred Priest is his own warning, Experimental Style, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Neyo and Faie have such interesting parallels and im, Violence against Children, im sorry, this is just pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:00:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29058633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ro29/pseuds/Ro29
Summary: Here is a fact: at no point did Dred Priest look at the children under him and think, ‘This is a person.’
Relationships: Faie (Star Wars) & CC-8826 | Neyo
Series: Messing around in the Soft Wars Sandbox [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937752
Comments: 6
Kudos: 64
Collections: Open Source Soft Wars





	the fist, the knife, the pulse under your skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/gifts), [Everything_or_Anything](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everything_or_Anything/gifts).



> this is just three tumblr prompts all piled into one fic lmao
> 
> the prompts; Faie's first day after being taken, Neyo's first day after being taken, and the thing that caused Faie to break 
> 
> I....really should not be allowed to write these characters anymore lmaooooooo

Faie doesn’t sleep, can not sleep, remembers the feeling of his hands on someone’s throat and thinks distantly that maybe he’ll throw up.

What do you do with an honour when someone gives it to you? You take it, of course you do, you have no choice.

Faie was given an honour and then given someone’s throat under his hands, a life under delicate skin and urged to go on.

Priest had watched him with a sneer and it had been so _easy_ to—

Faie doesn’t sleep, and he thinks that this might be how you kill someone, give them a life under their hands and urge them to be a weapon.

Preist hands Faie an honour wrapped in demands and Faie does the only thing he can.

He accepts.

(He does not cry.)

* * *

Here is a fact: at no point did Dred Priest look at the children under him and think, ‘ _This is a person_.’

He demands them be a machine because that is all they will ever be to him, no matter how much they bleed.

Here is another fact: He looked at them and thought, with a kind of awful amusement, ‘ _How far would they go if I made them?’_

* * *

It’s supposed to be an honour.

Maybe it is, maybe he just isn’t good at telling what is honourable and what is not.

He’s a clone after all, what does he know of honour?

Priest calls him forward and Neyo steps into the ring, falls into a ready stance with his too small body and thinks.

_It’s supposed to be an honour._

Priest calls start and Neyo watches bloody hands and blank eyes move lightning quick towards him and thinks, ‘ _There is no honour in this.’_

* * *

There is no one event that is the tipping point.

It goes like this: Faie needs to win, he needs to win like he needs air to breathe.

He needs to win because if he doesn’t then he is a failure and if he is a failure then he is nothing.

So there is no moment where Faie falls off the edge, tumbles into the oblivion that is Priest’s training and never crawls back up.

It is more like a game of balance, a sort of eventuality that creeps up and consumes him.

It goes like this: Priest demands something and Faie molds himself into that thing and never lets himself look back.

(This is a lie, Faie molds himself into everything Priest demands and he only ever looks back when he stares down at Neyo during spars.

Meeting Neyo’s eyes is always unsettling like looking into the past.)

Faie presses harder on his throat and Neyo’s eyes slip closed.

He almost doesn’t let go.

There is something to be said about killing your past in that, he thinks, doesn’t know whether it should matter or not.

* * *

Here is a fact: Priest fostered rivalry and competition in the cadets under him and kept them isolated, molded them into weapons and pushed them until they could no longer move and beyond that.

He never thought of them as people.

Here is a secret: They survived anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to find me other places I have a [writing tumblr](https://rose-blooms-red.tumblr.com) and a [fandom tumblr](https://themessofthecentury.tumblr.com)
> 
> Please come yell at me about Star Wars and DC!


End file.
